The restaurant industry cannot be painted with a wide brush, some outlets have thrived, others have struggled, said Todd Trulli during a recent interview. He owns George Henry’s restaurant in Warrensburg.
Misty Feulner, owner of George Henry’s restaurant in Lake George, believes she and other restaurants will fall too far behind to catch up, if regulations on the restaurant industry do not change. She and her fiance opened the establishment in October 2019, just five months before the pandemic hit.
Luke Callahan, who owns Bolton’s Pumpernickel and The Barrel along with Blue Water Manor, said he has a positive outlook for 2021, but restaurants simply can’t “grin and bear it” for another year.
In mid-January, Cassandra Wilusz of Revolution Cafe in Schuylerville, said looked on the horizon to 2022 but knows, for 2021, “We just got to get through it.”.
Restaurants and bars have been especially hard hit during the pandemic. In December, nationally, employment in leisure and hospitality declined by 498,000 jobs, with 372,000 of those losses in food services and drinking places. Since February 2020, employment in leisure and hospitality fell 23.2% by December, says a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Glens Falls, the leisure and hospitality jobs in December stood at 5,300, down 10% over last year, data from the BLS says.
Hospitality industry analyst David Nissensen wrote in an email that the market in Glens Falls “absolutely crashed” last year at the time when the usual seasonal uptick occurs. He called it a “double whammy.”
Despite restrictions on the number of people allowed in a restaurant, the requirement to serve food with alcohol, and the 10p.m. curfew, restauranteurs interviewed did not see all doom-and-gloom.
“While I don't think we will rebound completely in 2021,” Trulli said, “it's my expectation that the venues who adapted wisely to meet the ever-changing needs of customers will do much better this year.”
Callahan said much the same. “We’re going to have to change the way we do business. We have to be creative and flexible.”
As an example, Revolution Cafe cut back hours. Wilusz said she took advantage of the EIDL and Paycheck Protection programs and was planning to take a second draw on the PPP. Callahan purchased plexiglass partitions and plastic igloos to allow customers to eat outside in winter. Davidson Brothers’ Brewing Company in Glens Falls shut down for a short time and will reopen with a skeleton crew for carryout-only this weekend.
XII Sporks’ approach to 2021 has been to obtain a liquor license, to create new menu items and a loose tea bar, to cater and deliver meals. Feulner said she has kept one waitress on staff two days a week while Feulner, her fiancé and her stepson do not draw a salary.
Still, it’s precarious. “If nothing changes soon, if small businesses don’t get help—I see many not making it,” Feulner said. “It’s not a competition anymore—it’s about survival.”
At the same time, the situation has normalized, somewhat, Trulli said. He thinks consumers better understand the situation and that should help restaurants plan. However, to assume he has the answers would be foolish, he said. He is operating under worst-case assumptions.
Callahan also has a generally positive outlook for this year, but said, the state has “to reassess restrictions on businesses, and figure out how we can move forward in a safe manner that will allow businesses to survive.”
In mid-January, Rick Davidson of Davidson Brothers Brewing said, “2022 will be a big bounceback year, as long as the vaccine is out.” Then he added the caveat that restaurants must first survive 2021.
Trulli seemed to agree: “I have to believe that if and when restrictions are lifted, there will certainly be an economic boom.”
Callahan said, “By 2022, I want this to be so far in the rearview mirror that everyone just says, ‘Wow, that’s a bad Facebook memory’.”